Colossians Series, #1

Message for Feb 26 2012 @ FBC Sunnyside, WA

A Whole New Way to Live

Colossians 1:1-12

I love missionary stories, stories of the gospel coming to people who had never heard of Jesus, how they hear the story with fresh eyes and ears.  One of the most dramatic and joyful stories is that of the Mouk people in Papua New Guinea.  Here’s a short clip of a film from New Tribes Missions about how they received the good news:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKi7f0sRUHg

That reminds me of the words of Paul in the opening of his first letter to the Thessalonians 1:8-9:

⁸ The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, ⁹ for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God…

The church at Thessalonica was one with which Paul was intimately familiar.  He was part of their beginning and he praised them for their faith and good deeds.    

But, there’s another church, the church at Colossae, that Paul knew only second-hand.  He’d never been there; the good news had been carried there by others. 

He’s writing because there’s a dark cloud on the horizon of that church, one we’re going to explore in the weeks to come.  That cloud has to do with the endless war between God’s simple way to life through faith in His Son, and mere religion.   Biblical Christianity is not religious.  It is a message of redemption that leads to renewal; it’s the message of Jesus—His bloody cross and His empty tomb—that leads to renewal: it means forgiveness, changed lives, sin’s power broken, and death’s power muzzled.  That’s not a religion! 

We will get to that, but this first week of the series on Colossians we’re looking at the opening of the letter, and here, after Paul’s greeting, Paul prays for the believers in Colossae, and in the process paints a picture of the changed life.  When the message of Jesus comes storming into a life, it’s no summer shower; it’s a tornado that re-orders everything. 

So let’s look at the first 12 verses of Colossians:

¹ Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

 ² To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse: Grace and peace to you from God our Father.

 ³ We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴ because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints— ⁵ the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel ⁶ that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth. ⁷ You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, ⁸ and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

 ⁹ For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. ¹⁰ And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.

I want to make three simple observations from what Paul writes here, and they are a little out of order in the passage, but here we go…

1.    All over the world, the good news is bearing fruit

2.    The hope of the gospel plants love and faith in our lives

3.    As the gospel matures in our lives, our whole lives are transformed

All over the world, the good news is bearing fruit

Look again at vs. 6b-8:

All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth. ⁷ You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, ⁸ and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

The gospel of Jesus exploded out of Jerusalem.  Most of the story of that explosion is not told in the Bible; people that we’ll only discover when we meet them in heaven drove most of that growth.  One of them was that man Epaphras (v. 7), who told Paul about the church there.  We know next to nothing about him, but God knows.

All over the world!  People, never be shy about the gospel.  We’re winning, you know!  Of the 24,000 people groups, 16,000 have been reached.  In 100 AD, there were 360 non-believers for every believer; today there are only 7!  There are less than 8,000 people groups that are yet unreached, and in the last 60 years we’ve reached way more than that!  We really are on the cusp of fulfilling the Great Commission.  All over the world the gospel is bearing fruit and growing.  Have confidence in the gospel!

The hope of the gospel plants love and faith in our lives

This world-advancing gospel doesn’t merely give us a new religion (who needs THAT?); it gives us HOPE that plants love and faith in our lives.  Look at vs. 3-6a

 ³ We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴ because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints— ⁵ the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel ⁶ that has come to you.

The standard form of Paul’s letters follows the style of the time: X to Y, greetings.  Then the writer would ask a blessing on the reader, usually in the form of asking a god to bless the reader.  Paul takes the form, and fills the blessings with a record of his prayers for the Colossians. 

The first thing that he mentions is his thanksgiving for the changed hope of the Colossians; the second is the change that’s come into their lives. 

I want you to think about the lives of the people in Colossae before the gospel.  The common people lived for generations believing that there were many gods, who had complete power over their lives and that these gods were mean, petty and egocentric.  The idea that the gods or that God loves them was completely foreign to them.  The idea that God would sacrifice on their behalf was one that would never occur to them.  The idea that God would send His Son to give His life for them was beyond their comprehension.

They had an especially bleak concept of death.  After death, the best you could hope for was a brief time as a “shade”, a kind of a ghost, drifting in a dreamlike state, a state far lower than this life.

But then, here comes the hope of Jesus!  Love and life and forgiveness, and a hope of eternity with God, and a resurrection to life! 

The hope of the good news produces, says Paul, love for the saints, and faith in Christ.  Neighbors were turned into family, but more than family: forever family in Jesus Christ.  This is real life!

The best illustration of this is the little letter that Paul sent along with Colossians—the letter to the man in whose home the church met: Philemon.  Here, Philemon is urged to look at his slave Onesimus no longer simply as a slave but as a brother in Jesus (Philemon 1:16).   

This is what the gospel does.  But he dials it up even more in vs. 9-12.  Remember, vs. 3-6a is backward looking, looking at how the gospel had already changed the Colossians; now they were people of hope, and love and faith; but never stop at what you get when you come to Jesus.  It’s like those commercials: “But wait! There’s more!”  To put it in kind of modern terms, the first part, vs. 3-8, has to do with our conversion, and the second part, vs. 9-12, with our discipleship.

As the gospel matures in our lives, our whole lives are transformed

Anyone see the movie Moneyball?  It’s a true story, how Billy Beane, as General Manager of the Oakland Athletics needed to rebuild the team after the departure of star player Jason Giambi to the Yankees.  The As didn’t have the money to hire stars, but while trying to arrange a trade with the Cleveland Indians, Billy Beane meets Peter Brand, a young Yale economics grad who’s gotten hooked on a concept called sabermetrics.  Everything depends on getting on base.  The OBP—the On Base Percentage—is the one most important stat.  Not batting stance, or age, or stealing bases.  Just get on base. 

Billy Beane is sold on the idea, and comes back to Oakland to sell the idea to a very skeptical staff of managers and coaches.  He tells them that the traditional measures don’t matter; all that matters is getting on base.  At first, Oakland stumbles badly.  People want Beane fired.  The team’s manager, Art Howe, is openly contemptuous of Beane’s leadership.  Sport talk radio is filled with angry fans.  But slowly, things turn.  Players—none of them stars, many deeply flawed, but good at getting on base—begin to gel as a team, and they start to win.  The A’s go on to a 20 game winning streak, and make it to the first round of the American League playoffs. 

When I saw that movie, I asked myself, what’s the OBP of our faith?  What is the key measure?  Maybe it’s the RTL: the radically transformed life.  That’s the measure.  That’s what Paul prays for in vs. 9-12:

⁹ For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. ¹⁰ And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.

Back in vs. 6, Paul said, “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing”; here he talks about our lives “bearing fruit in every good work.”  What he’s praying for here is that the believers at Colossae would live out the fullness of what they’ve received as new people in Jesus Christ.  Let’s break that down a little more.           

What I see here is Paul praying that believers have an internal transformation that leads to an external change of behavior and attitude that overflows in joy.

You see the internal transformation in vs. 9:

⁹ For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

When we come to Christ, the process of change does not stop.  It’s not as if all God wants to do in our lives is to forgive us.  He truly wants us to know kingdom life, life in the Spirit, now.  “Spiritual wisdom” here is truly “wisdom that comes from the (Holy) Spirit.”  In many ways, this verse is a prayer that the Colossians be filled with the Holy Spirit.  And as He comes in His fullness, so comes a knowledge of God’s will as He guides us, and assures us, and blesses us. 

I read that here in Sunnyside, when the irrigation canals were built, that that raised the water table so much that the streets became muddy, so in 1917 at the cost of $62,000, the streets were paved.  Well, when the Spirit of God comes into a life, there will be an “above ground” effect.   You see that in vs. 10-11a:

¹⁰ And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might…

Now, this I love with a passion.  Live a life worthy.  Live a life that shows Jesus.  Live a life that is the gospel itself. Here’s how we please Him: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power to His glorious might.

What Paul envisions here in his prayer—and I believe that what we see here is the desire of God for all His people—is a people who showcase the love of God by their good deeds and their way of life.  He sees the love of God cascading into lives and out in deeds that truly change the world.

Warren Weirsbe writes this on this passage:

“In my pastoral ministry, I have met people who have become intoxicated with ‘studying the deeper truths of the Bible.’ Usually they have been given a book or introduced to some teacher’s tapes. Before long, they get so smart they become dumb! The ‘deeper truths’ they discover only detour them from practical Christian living. Instead of getting burning hearts of devotion to Christ, they get big heads and start creating problems in their homes and churches. All Bible truths are practical, not theoretical. If we are growing in knowledge, we should also be growing in grace."

A quick time out: what fruit are you bearing that show God’s love to the world?  If you had a moment when you drew a blank, can I suggest, will all the love and tenderness of Christ, that that is a crying need in your lives.

Sometimes people say, well, when I get it together, then I’ll do those things.  Can I suggest that the doing of good deeds, the blessing of people who don’t know Jesus, that that is often an essential ingredient in getting your life together?

So, there is the internal transformation, the external deeds that showcase the love of God, and finally, a joyful overflow (11b-12):

…so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.

There is endurance without joy—but who needs that?  The final outcome Paul sees here is that we become a people who are “joyfully giving thanks to the Father.”  The Jesus faith is not a grim faith. 

Whenever I see believers huddled in sad little circles, I know that the Spirit of God is being grieved and quenched.  The natural state of followers of Jesus isn’t enjoying the world and enduring their faith, but enduring the world with patience and joyfully celebrating the presence of Jesus Christ in their lives.

In John 17:13 (NLT), Jesus prays to the Father,

Now I am coming to you. I told them many things while I 

was with them in this world so they would be filled with my joy.

Jesus wants us to be filled with joy!  Remember the Mouk people in Papua New Guinea?  They had a riot of joy when the whole glory of the gospel came over them. 

My prayer for you, for all of us, is the same as Paul’s for the Colossians: that this great hope explode into our lives as love and faith; and that we move forward, filled with the Spirit, bearing fruit in good deeds, with great endurance and patience, with joy, joy that life cannot snuff out, joy for all the blessings that are ours in Jesus. 

Let’s pray.

Make Your Choice

Message at FBC Sunnyside, WA, Feb 19, 2012

Make Your Choice

2 Timothy 2:20-21

2 Timothy is the last letter Paul wrote.  Most likely he wrote it just a few months before his death by beheading.  That makes this letter special.  In it, he writes with a passion and urgency to his associate Timothy about really important things.  Impending death focuses the mind.  Perhaps you’ve experienced a time when you believed your time on earth was coming to an end, or when the end was clearing coming for someone you love; if you have, you know what I’m talking about.

I have some “famous last words” of some famous people that might interest you.  Some are funny:

How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?  P. T. Barnum, d. 1891

I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.
Humphrey Bogart, d. January 14, 1957

Die, my dear?  Why, that’s the last thing I’ll do!  Groucho Marx, d. August 19, 1977. 

Some are defiant:

Go on, get out—last words are for fools who haven't said enough.  To his housekeeper, who urged him to tell her his last words so she could write them down for posterity. Karl Marx, d. 1883

Don't you dare ask God to help me.  To her housekeeper, who had begun to pray aloud.
Joan Crawford, d. May 10, 1977

Some are touching:

I die hard but am not afraid to go.  George Washington, US President, d. December 14, 1799

Lord, help my poor soul.  Edgar Allan Poe, writer, d. October 7, 1849

And some are full of faith:

Let us cross over the river and sit in the shade of the trees.  General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, d. 1863

I am in the land of the dying, and I am soon going to the land of the living.  John Newton. d., December 21, 1807. 

The letter we call 2 Timothy is an extended “famous last words” from Paul.  But his letter is far from morbid; much of the letter is composed of a series of challenges to Timothy in which Paul urges him to examine his life and answer this question: what kind of person am I really?  Am I walking intently, following Jesus with my whole heart, soul, mind and strength?  What he says again and again to Timothy—and to us—is, “Make your choice.”  Is it—living for Jesus and the kingdom of God, or is it, living for self with Jesus just along for the ride?

I could illustrate this from several passages in 2 Timothy, but my heart is drawn today to chapter 2.  There, in vs. 1-7, Paul urges Timothy to serve the Lord like a focused soldier, a competing athlete, and a hard-working farmer—all images of hard work.  He urges him to stick to the important things, and not to get side-tracked into foolish chatter.  And he warns him not to follow two people who’d really gone completely off the rails in teaching, two men named Hymenaeus and Philetus, who were teaching something strange: that “the resurrection had already taken place.” These two theological knuckleheads were destroying the faith of some people.   

They were poisoning the well of people’s faith, and Paul does not mince words about them—their teaching says Paul was godless gangrene.

Right after he mentions these two, he says this:

¹⁹ Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.”   

Now, remember the context.  He’s implying that unlike Hymenaeus and Philetus, God knows that Paul and Timothy and those who hold to the apostles’ teaching, those are the ones whom the Lord has his hand on.  He’s also implying that Hymenaeus and Philetus are people who are mired in wickedness.

The words, “The Lord knows those who are His” is a paraphrase from the book of Numbers.  And it means this: You can rest in the firm, sure hand of God.  God has you, and He is responsible for your salvation and your eternal well-being.  And that’s good news, all the time. 

But then Paul cites a balancing saying.  It’s interesting how all throughout 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus—letters we traditionally call the “pastoral epistles”—Paul cites many sayings that may well have been part of an early confession of faith or a list of instructional statements—what might be called a catechism today.  The first saying—about the Lord knowing who’s His—assures us that God differentiates between His faithful servants and those who are unfaithful. The second saying calls on those who choose to identify themselves with the Lord to live holy lives: “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.”   

The first saying comforts me; the second challenges me.  It says, if you confess the Lord’s name, the name of Jesus, there is a kind of life that goes with that confession—a life that turns away from wickedness and all sorts of sin, and that embraces God’s good instead.

Let me tell you this: the most precious gift you can give the Lord is a holy life.  The most precious gift you can give your church is a holy life.  The most precious gift you can give your spouse is a holy life.  The most precious gift you can give your family is a holy life.  It is not your wits, education, money or even your service. It is a lifestyle that chooses God over all other choices.  It is also the hardest gift to give the Lord.

Paul then offers a central illustration to drive home this all-important point, in vs. 20-21:

 ²⁰In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble. ²¹If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.  

In a sense, this illustration expands on the second saying: Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.  I want to take some time with this.  Paul says “in a large house”—that would be a wealthy house.  Ever attended a dinner and found that it was much fancier than you’d expected?  A few times a year, we break out “the good stuff”: the silver in the little chest that my wife keeps on top of the hutch, the special plates in the special cupboard.  Do you do the same?  There’s the everyday stuff and then there’s “the good stuff.”  Not everybody has “the good stuff”, but if you have the good stuff you always have the ordinary plates and silver and so forth.

In a Greek or Roman great house, the two types of plates would be silver and gold on the one hand (way above my pay grade!), or wood or clay on the other.  Paul describes the two as some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble.  A noble purpose would be to celebrate a birthday or Thanksgiving; an “ignoble” purpose would be to take out the trash.  You would never pile turkey bones on your grandmother’s fine china to haul out to the trash. 

Now, here’s where the analogy breaks down a little bit.  Dishes are dishes and they can’t change who or what they are.  But, we aren’t dishes; like Paul just said, we have a call to “turn away from wickedness.”  We have a choice to make.  And Paul says, listen Timothy, listen up people of God, you need to make a choice: are you the vessel of honor, are you the “good stuff” or are you more like the trash can?  “If a man (literally, someone) cleanses himself from the latter (literally, “these things”, the dishonorable, trashy things of life), he/she will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.”  

Do you want to be that kind of instrument in God’s hands?  Do you want the best that God can do with your life?  Or are you tempted to settle, to compromise, to be an also-ran in the godly, Christward life?

I have a pastor friend in the next town over from where we live in California, and he asked me to do a consultation with him.  One of the first questions I asked him was: Does your church have a mission statement?  He laughed and told me quote a story.

“Well, yes we do.  Several years ago I suggested we make the statement, ‘We exist to make fully committed disciples of Christ.’  And the board replied, ‘Well, maybe that’s too much; let’s just make it ‘We exist to make disciples of Christ.’  I asked, ‘Well, how about “committed” disciples of Christ?’ And they said, ‘That’s still asking too much.”

What amazed me was that the church was consciously choosing to be a church of wood and clay vessels.  I mean, it happens all the time, but to do it officially, intentionally?  Amazing. 

Not the end of the story, though.  That pastor then smiled and said, “But now those folks are off the board.  This year we’re changing it to back to ‘fully committed disciples of Christ.’”  Amen to that!

Just barely ‘disciples’?  Folks, don’t settle for that.  That’s settling for being a clay plate when God is calling you to gold. 

By the way, have you ever heard this thing that some Christians are just believers, and some are real disciples?  It’s nonsense.  All believers are called disciples in Scripture.  It’s just that some disciples are faithful, and some are unfaithful.  You don’t get to check a box that says, “Just a believer.”  “Just a believer” is another name for “faithless disciple.”

Now Paul says that we are to clean ourselves if we want to be that kind of disciple.  Cleanse yourself?  Maybe that’s a little bit of a surprise.  Paul says that anyone following Christ needs to cleanse himself to be counted as a “noble dish” in the house of God.

Now, let’s be real clear.  Jesus is the one who cleanses us from sin.  On the cross, He paid the price of our salvation.  Paul here is NOT talking about some idea that we have to clean ourselves up from our sin, the sin the separates us from God. 

What he IS talking about is that each of us has a responsibility to pursue godliness, war against sin in our lives, and to get rid of the junk that separates us from God’s best for our lives.

You see, making us right with Himself is God’s business alone—we call that justification.  Working that out in our lives—well God is still the prime mover, but we are called to cooperate with Him.  That’s called sanctification. 

So what we’re talking about here is discipleship, sanctification, and full commitment.  Yes, I know that that’s hard to achieve.  But frankly, most of us don’t even try; we are like those leaders in that church who didn’t want the words “fully committed” in their mission statement.

I use all kinds of analogies to make this clear; they all mean pretty much the same thing.  One is the bar code Christian.  The idea is that that when you come to Jesus, you get a Heaven-Bound Barcode so that when you die, God can run you over the scanner and there’s a BOOP sound—yep, you can go to heaven!  (Even if you live like hell!)

Is that all that God wants to do in your life?  Make it so you can go to heaven?  Or does He want more?

Or maybe there’s the Vampire Christian.  You got the blood all right, but you’re still a crazy, darkness-loving bat.

Or maybe there’s a Jesus in the Sidecar Christian.  It’s nice to have him along for the ride, but you still have the handlebars—you’re in charge!

No, Jesus is uncompromising.  The Lord that saves completely would have us change completely too.    We are not intended to be plates of clay and wood; we are intended for gold and silver.

Here’s the rub: it’s your choice.  You can be an all-in kind of Jesus follower, or you can be an also ran.  Heaven, yes; the applause of heaven; no. 

Do you want to be the kind of person that God can trust His glory with?    

It’s going to take more than a choice.  A choice is a beginning, not an end.  It is a choice to be a person of prayer, fellowship, and service; most especially to be a person who hears, heeds, and hides the word of God in his heart; a person who seeks God daily, a person who listens when God sends someone to shape their lives. 

Do you need a new start, a reboot, today?  There might be something big and obvious in your life that you’ve been harboring that you know is wrong.  It might be more subtle: a bad attitude, an old hurt that you’ve never forgiven, a bad habit that you can’t get past, at least on your own.

Maybe you want someone to pray with you, and I’d be honored to do that.  Maybe you simply want to deal with that, you and Jesus, and that’s OK; just remember that Jesus uses the people around you too.

Silver and gold or clay and wood?  That’s the choice.  Be a person with whom God can trust His glory.

Let’s pray.